I’m in the multifamily industry in St. Louis, MO and have been for almost 30 years.  It seems we have an ongoing, common issue with getting and keeping good maintenance techs.  With so many property management companies losing & needing great maintenance techs, I posed the question on our facebook page as to why good techs are leaving and the common answer was wages. They can make more with their own business or in commercial construction jobs and also avoid the issues with being on call.  So, I did some math. Again, I’m in the St. Louis market, so using some typical numbers we see here for this. 

If the average rent is $900 per month and you lose just 6 residents a year due to poor maintenance, that’s a minimum of $5400.00 in vacancy loss if the apartment sits vacant for just 30 days. Now add in the wages paid to maintenance, contractors and leasing to turn and re-lease the units and the utility costs management will have to pay during this time, also any inspection fees. So, let’s add in another $500.00 per unit. Now we’re at $8400.00 for the 6 units we lost due to poor maintenance. And these number are conservative. In all likelihood it will be much more.

And can we put a dollar amount on the poor reviews we’ll get and the chatter they’ll be telling literally everyone they know about the reason why they’re moving due to poor maintenance?? All the while, we’re spending thousands on online marketing, ads, and concessions to get the unit re-rented. That's not even added in. 

If you were to take that $8400.00 annual loss and divide that over the average number of annual hours, (2080) that puts an additional $4.03 per hour on the table for wages.  For 1 tech, that’s a 20% increase to the average $20.00 per hour maintenance hourly wage. (That's the average wage in St. Louis)  And don’t forget to factor in the cost of employee turnover, rehiring and added pressure and work it puts on the remaining team when you’re a man (or woman) down. Too often this can be a domino effect as well, and when 1 goes, there may be more to follow. Am I totally off base here or is there a possible simple solution to resolve the revolving maintenance employee door?  In leasing we often justify our higher rents to prospects by telling them “You get what you pay for, and we offer the best quality and value!”  Same may apply to our teams too.  Would love to hear your input and comments.